Category Archives: War, Military

“The Stan” shares private thoughts, therapy sessions, journal entries, and memories of our family of four as father and son deploy to combat. A rare opportunity to experience deployment as we say goodbye, sacrifice for others, struggle inwardly, attempt to heal, and move on with life from differing, even opposing, perspectives. Feel unspoken emotions, hopes, and dreams common to military families.

Payback is great for alternative history fans as well as crime enthusiasts and those interested in World War Two.

It’s a novel filled with disaster and possibility that changes the course of world history.

What if Hitler had been assassinated before World War Two? Who would fill the power vacuum? Who would take over in Germany? How would Mussolini react?

Payback is a fast-paced novel involving two assassins, the gangster Bugsy Siegel and an undercover FBI agent. They travel to Italy for Hitler’s state visit in 1938 to kill him, with additional help from the anti-fascist Mafia.

In the aftermath of the assassination chaos ensues as the Nazi leaders are unaware of the dramatic changes taking place in Germany during their absence. Mussolini makes new plans of his own in the light of the events.

Payback has been described as “one of the best ‘what if?’ novels since ‘Fatherland,”(Kim Kinrade, author of “Rockets of the Reich”) “a great read with an amazing plot that kept me always wanting more,” (David Avoura King, author of “Hitler Out of Time”) “strong characters and surprising twists and turns,” (Sandra Saidak, author of “From the Ashes”) “a first-rate thriller that keeps the heart racing to the very last page.” (James Thayer, author of “S-Day”).

ISBN numbers · ISBN-10: 1945181001 and · ISBN-13: 978-1945181006

ASIN numbers for the Kindle : ASIN: B01MFABT1Q.

Payback has 268 pages

£11.49/ $13.99 paperback

£4.91 /$5.99 Kindle.

Payback is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and all major wholesalers and retailers.

Dog is running for his life. Wrongly blamed after a child was taken, the wolf went deep into the wilderness to avoid human hunters. The last thing he wanted was to be shoved into someone else’s flight for safety.

Marcus Brady is a MarineSniper, just returned from a long deployment that did little to boost his faith in humanity. He prefers to spend his home time in parks and forests, avoiding people, but barely a day passes before the Corporal is ambushed and forced to use the skills he has developed over nearly six years in the Corps. Except, this time, instead of a gritty fire team or squad of angry Marines fighting alongside, his backup is a lethal wolf that likes to attack while his back is turned. If Marc can’t make friends, it may cost both their lives.

This is one of the most disturbing stories I have read. I visited Israel in 1967, shortly after the Six Day War ended. I remember the Israeli taxi driver boasting about how quickly they had won that war, gleefully pointing out captured tanks and other military vehicles at the side of the roads we travelled, and feeling rather disgusted at his smugness. Surely all war was horrible, surely all war implied suffering and death? My 20-year old self was horrified, not impressed.

Susan Abulhawa tells her story with passion and pain. It is the story of a family which grew up in the peaceful village of Ein Hod, occupied by Israelis after the partition of Palestine in 1948, and then was forced to relocate to a camp in Jenin. After bombing, burning, killing, maiming, plundering and looting, soldiers came to claim the land the family had lived on since distant times.

It is nothing short of devastating to read of families torn apart, of life in a refugee camp, of loss, destruction, and oppression. I will never forget the horror I felt reading about a mother having her baby son torn from her arms, lost to her forever to be raised by the enemy.

The story begins in a peaceful, ancient village, and ends with the massacre of so-called terrorists, an incident denied in the US press. One of the soldiers gives the narrator water to drink during the siege, but it’s ‘not enough to wash a mother’s blood from her daughter’s skin.’ Earlier, she felt a strange desire to be a fish, to live ‘inside the water’s soothing world, where screams and gunfire were not heard and death was not smelled.’

It is impossible to read this story without feeling, to quote: ‘sad for the youth betrayed by their leaders for symbols and flags and war and power.’ And sadder still, to know that the conflict rages on.

On September 11, 2001, Doug Laux was a freshman in college, on the path to becoming a doctor. But with the fall of the Twin Towers came a turning point in his life. After graduating he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get himself to Afghanistan and into the center of the action. Through persistence and hard work he was fast-tracked to a clandestine operations position overseas. Dropped into a remote region of Afghanistan, he received his baptism by fire. Frustrated by bureaucratic red tape, a widespread lack of knowledge of the local customs and culture and an attitude of complacency that hindered his ability to combat the local Taliban, Doug confounded his peers by dressing like a native and mastering the local dialect, making contact and building sources within several deadly terrorist networks. His new approach resulted in unprecedented successes, including uncovering the largest IED network in the world, responsible for killing hundreds of US soldiers. Meanwhile, Doug had to keep up false pretenses with his family, girlfriend and friends–nobody could know what he did for a living–and deal with the emotional turbulence of constantly living a lie. His double life was building to an explosive resolution, with repercussions that would have far reaching consequences.

The greater the evil the higher the price…When a soldier is found to have killed his family in a brutal attack, British Army Detective Sgt Major Tom Crane and his team are called in to bring a swift resolution. But, as more vengeful killings by soldiers of their families come to light, it soon becomes clear that there is something far more sinister at work. Crane knows there must be a connection. But what? Could a preacher be the connection? Is he offering salvation? Or is he a cruel fake preying on the vulnerable and forcing people to take the first, untimely Steps to Heaven?

When lawyer Carol Berkley visits a man on death row, who has not spoken one word from the time of his arrest and right through his trial, she is shocked by his first spoken words. James Delaney is a man sentenced for one murder, but it turns out that he may be the most prolific serial killer the world has ever known. When James despatches Carol to find a priest, a priest with a secret, she becomes tangled in a web of murder, blackmail and revenge, as her life spirals out of control. Father Martin Doyle thought he had left a terrible secret behind him in Ireland, but when Carol turns up at his church in a poor Miami neighbourhood, he is forced to travel back home to confront the demons of his past and discover even more sinister new ones. With a hurricane looming large off the Florida coast, James knows that there is a far more dangerous storm brewing. The arrival of new prison officer Elias Wainwright means that James will never make it to his official execution date, without the help of Carol Berkley and the priest with a very particular secret. Time is running out for James and he has a secret of his own that may change everything. But some secrets should be kept in the family.

When Trent is given orders to leave his lab and to deploy to Afghanistan to test a highly confidential and dangerous serum which he has developed, Skyla can’t shake the feeling that the life she has with strong, dependable, loving, Trent is about to irrevocably change.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

How much do we keep from the people we love? Why is the truth so often buried in secrets? Can we learn from the past or must we forget it?

Standing one evening at the window of her house by the sea, Anne Quirk sees a rabbit disappearing in the snow. Nobody remembers her now, but this elderly woman was in her youth a pioneer of British documentary photography. Her beloved grandson, Luke, now a captain with the Royal Western Fusiliers, is on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, part of a convoy taking equipment to the electricity plant at Kajaki. Only when Luke returns home to Scotland does Anne’s secret story begin to emerge, along with his, and they set out for an old guest house in Blackpool where she once kept a room.

Hannibal Barca has conquered Saguntum and is preparing his army to lay siege on Rome.

But an arrogant Roman Senate is dismissive of the barbarian warrior – and refuses to take any steps to protect the city.

A young man, Gaius, has been brought up as part of the Wolves of Rome, one of the most powerful and feared legions of the Empire.

As the threat from Hannibal rises, the Wolves are given orders to prepare for battle.

Meanwhile, back in Rome, Gaius has found out that his childhood sweetheart, and the love of his life, Julia Varro, has been betrothed to Lucius Aemilius Paullus by her father to secure an important political alliance.

Gaius finds himself trapped between his duty – fighting to the death for the Republic – and his heart – fighting to secure Julia’s hand in marriage.

As the war ravages the nation, and Rome faces one crushing defeat after another from Hannibal’s invading barbarian horde ,Gaius stands to lose his love and his life…

Can he help lead the Wolves – and Rome – to victory against Hannibal?

Or does he stand to lose it all in the fight to secure the Empire?

Set during the events of the Second Punic War, circa 218 – 201 BC, ‘Wolves of Rome’ is a sweeping military epic set against the backdrop of one of the ancient world’s greatest conflicts – a war that would see the end of one nation and the rise of a new world super-power that would forever change the course of western civilization.

Enlisted man Jason Beckman reluctantly agrees to stand for his division officer at a high society wedding. The grooms cousin, wealthy co-ed Joyce Bancroft, is recruited at the last minute to be Jason’s dinner partner. Will Jason survive the evening? Will Joyce figure out Jason offers something money and name can’t buy? You decide who the ‘polar Bear’ is!

For more than four years, Martin McGartland lived the astonishing double life of a secret agent. To the IRA, he was a trusted Intelligence Office and an integral member of an active service unit. To the British Government however, he was known only as ‘Agent Carol’. Martin McGartland is credited by British Intelligence with saving the lives of at least fifty people. Every time he tipped off the authorities, he risked detection and yet, heroically and fearlessly, he continued to pass on life-saving information. Finally, his cover was blown. Martin was taken from Sinn Fein headquarters in Belfast to an IRA safehouse for questioning and almost certain execution. Though guarded by armed men, in a desperate bid for freedom, he dived from a third floor window…This breathtaking story is now a major film starring Sir Ben Kingsley and Jim Sturgess.

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